Acting In Concert

Symphony Out Front In Australia`s Cultural Revival

When the Chicago Symphony Orchestra made its first tour of Australia last February and March, many members were surprised by the sheer quantity and quality of classical music flourishing Down Under.

Of the 11 full-time professional orchestras that serve the nation`s 16 million residents, the most influential-certainly the most visible-is the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The ensemble, conducted by its music director, Stuart Challender, will appear at Orchestra Hall Wednesday as part of a three- week, 15-concert, U.S.-debut tour celebrating the bicentenary of the British settlement of Australia.

Soprano Joan Sutherland, perhaps Australia`s most famous musical export, calls the Sydney orchestra ``the backbone of the musical scene in Australia,`` an opinion with which Challender, who has guided the symphony`s artistic fortunes since Jan. 1, heartily concurs.

The 41-year-old conductor is clearly eager to counter the popular image

(perpetuated by TV commercials and the ``Crocodile Dundee`` movies) of Australia as a rough-and-tumble frontier society whose populace drinks ale, hangs out at beachside barbecues and drawls ``g`day`` a lot.

``The Sydney Symphony gives more concerts than any other orchestra in Australia,`` Challender explains. ``That`s more than 150, including our basic series of 50 concerts, a series in the heavily populated outlying areas of Sydney and a series devoted entirely to contemporary music.`` That`s not too shabby for a symphony orchestra that has only been in existence since 1932.

There`s more: Along with its home concerts at the Opera House (a futuristic cultural emporium whose huge, cowl-like gables dominate the skyline of Sydney Harbor), the orchestra takes music to all parts of New South Wales

(the state of which Sydney is the principal city), traveling some 5,000 miles every season. It presents an extensive number of workshops and school concerts, and each season supplies the public with hundreds of hours of music via radio and TV.

This latter service is a direct result of its affiliation with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which administers the six permanent orchestras of Sydney, Hobart, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.

The Sydney Symphony`s maiden American tour is being underwritten chiefly by a $1 million (Australian) grant from an Australian computer firm. The very fact than a government-controlled institution was able to secure major funding from the private sector is a real breakthrough, in Challender`s view. So encouraged is the conductor, in fact, that he and Mary Valentine, the orchestra`s general manager, are working hard to raise the $2 million needed to undertake a European tour in 1992.

Things haven`t always been so rosy for the Sydney Symphony, according to Challender, who spends up to eight months a season in working residence with his orchestra. Before his arrival as principal guest conductor two years ago, the symphony had suffered fluctuating artistic standards, weak box office and declining morale. Absentee music directors and fiscal neglect by the Australian government were part of the problem, but only part.

``Australia is a country that gives great support and great fame to its sporting heroes,`` Challender explains. ``But culture up until now has been, if not totally ignored, then downtrodden. It certainly hasn`t been a government priority.

``For years, the Sydney Symphony suffered a bit, because even though we had chief conductors of the quality of Zdenek Macal and Charles Mackerras, they were only resident with the orchestra for six to eight weeks a year. This meant that the orchestra had to survive on guest and local conductors the rest of the year. It also didn`t have-I think it is fair to say-a very committed management.

``Part of the reason behind appointing me and a new general manager was to have people on the premises who could address themselves to all the problems that existed within the orchestra.``

Challender says he believes he and Valentine have made a great deal of progress in a relatively short time. The musicians` working conditions and salaries have improved. Attendance at home concerts has risen to some 250,000 subscribers. Musical standards and player morale are up, and the orchestra is back in the recording studio again after a long absence.

``It`s nothing but up for us,`` the conductor declares, citing the residual benefits that the Sydney Symphony (along with many other Australian arts groups) will reap from the resurgence of cultural pride that the bicentennial has inspired.

As former British colonies that speak the same language-more or less-Australia and the United States have much in common, culturally speaking. And because jet travel has narrowed the geographical distance between the continents, there are greater possibilities for cultural exchange than ever before, Challender believes.